Using the Living As Proxies in the Politics of the Dead: U.S. Grave Exhumation in the Soviet Zone of Germany, 1945-1953
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Using the Living as Proxies in the Politics of the Dead: U.S. Grave Exhumation in the Soviet Zone of Germany, 1945-1953. By Jacquelyn G. Olson Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Department of History of Vanderbilt University In partial fulfillment of the requirements For Honors in History April 2020 “A war is only over when the last soldier is buried” Russian General Alexander Suvovov (1799) ii TABLE OF CONTENTS IN MEMORIUM ....................................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................... v INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... vi Background to National Duty ............................................................................................... ix Preexisting Scholarship ........................................................................................................ xv CHAPTER ONE ........................................................................................................................ 1 AGRC Activity: France .......................................................................................................... 3 Postwar Commemoration ....................................................................................................... 4 AGRC Protocol ...................................................................................................................... 5 Temporary Cemeteries, Community Caretakers .................................................................. 17 A Change in Strategy: Movement toward Repatriation ....................................................... 20 Addendum: Other Liberated Countries in Western Europe ................................................. 27 CHAPTER TWO...................................................................................................................... 30 Wasted Time ........................................................................................................................ 32 A Devil’s Deal: DPs as Negotiation Pawns (April 1947-March 1949) ............................... 38 Finally, Exhumation Progress .............................................................................................. 51 The Survival of the Soviet Repatriation Mission ................................................................. 61 Moving Forward ................................................................................................................... 66 CHAPTER THREE .................................................................................................................. 68 British Exhumation Units in the Soviet Zone ...................................................................... 70 Origins of the WASt ............................................................................................................. 71 “Underground” Partners: AEK Relations with East Germany............................................. 76 Compromise: British Berlin Detachment Lives On ............................................................. 81 Limited Recognition, Unending Commitment ..................................................................... 84 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................ 87 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................... 93 iii IN MEMORIUM This thesis is dedicated to Technical Sergeant Benjamin H. Stedman and all those who remain missing in former East Germany. May they rest in peace wherever they may be. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is almost impossible to properly acknowledge the process, the embedded self- growth, and the perpetual emotional and mental marathon this thesis required. From a spark of inspiration in fall 2017 during one lecture in Professor Emily Greble’s “Muslims in Modern Europe” course to now, I am incredibly grateful for all the support I have received from mentors, colleagues, friends, and family. I am deeply thankful for the Vanderbilt History Department in awarding me a Casebier Grant for research in Germany, which supported me on a two-week journey in February 2019 that changed my life. During my trip, I met with local historians, including Norbert Wagner, a neighborhood photographer, Johann Karl, and a DeutschlandFunk journalist, Julia Tieke. I rode with Maik Lamolla, the curator of the Garnison Museum, to the Zehrensdorf Cemetery. I am also grateful for his patience in sitting with me in the closed museum during the off-season so I could spend hours in the freezing kitchen archives. Most importantly, I thank my host, Brigit Kolkmann, for her hospitality and community connections during my ten-day stay in Wünsdorf/Zossen. The journey did not stop there. Upon reflecting on my research trip, I shifted focus and am grateful for my communications with historian Seumas Spark and RAF historian Stuart Hadaway, the two lone British scholars to ever mention British exhumation in the Soviet Zone of Germany. I am indebted to Hadaway as he sent me crucial primary documents from the U.K. National Archives and British Royal Air Force Archives by post. During my time back at Vanderbilt, I am thankful for my essential correspondence with Professor Jochen Hellbeck at Rutgers University and Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author, Rick Atkinson. This project would not have been possible without their advice and archival connections, especially at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. I must also mention the incredible work of Vanderbilt’s Central Library staff, namely Inter-Library Loan. Thank you, Jim Toplon and Rachel Adams, in particular. At the National Archives II at College Park, Maryland, I am thankful for the Textual Records Division, especially Timothy Nenninger and his crew, for decoding my antiquated microfilm footnotes. Without them, the Baltic DPs would never have been given their due credit for U.S. exhumation. I am also thankful for fate by sitting me next to Professor John Moremon, a New Zealand WWII exhumation scholar in the reading rooms. I am incredibly grateful for our email correspondence and his copies of NARA documents. Above all, I am indebted to my thesis advisors, Professors Helmut Smith, and Joel Harrington. After countless office hour visits, email correspondence, phone calls, and Zoom chats, they made me produce my best work. Research that would have certainly made my twelve-year-old self, one who wore “Rosie the Riveter” t-shirts and collected military insignias from flea markets and sand from each D-Day beach, proud. Thank you. v Death’s Birth: The End’s Beginning “The nation which forgets its defenders will itself be forgotten” -Calvin Coolidge, 19201 The former Woodstock Community Hospital janitor from McHenry County, Illinois climbed aboard the British Avro Lancaster bomber right before 17:50 on Thursday, January 20, 1944. Born in 1915, Technical Sergeant Benjamin Howell Stedman had enlisted in the army a month prior to the January mission, and was posted to the British No 97 Squadron in Cambridgeshire, England at the Royal Airforce (RAF) Bourn base.2 As the only American attached to the bomber, Stedman joined six British men as the rear gunner for the day bombing campaign over Germany.3 After completing ten successful missions, the bomber, operated by recently married pilot Cyril Wakley from London, had orders to conduct its first night bombing over Berlin.4 Directed toward Berlin, the Lancaster bomber crossed the English Channel carrying a payload of 14,000 pounds on the night of January 20. Upon reaching German skies, however, the crew lost contact with the command headquarters. Shot down by flak, the burning Lancaster bomber crashed into a field next to the town of Zossen, approximately thirty kilometers south of Berlin. Three men successfully bailed out, surviving to become prisoners- 1 Bill Warnock, The Dead of Winter: How Battlefield Investigators, WWII Veterans, and Forensic Scientists Solved the Mystery of the Bulge’s Lost Soldiers (New York: Chamberlain Bros., 2005), 2. 2 “Archive Report: Allied Forces: 20/21.01.1944 No 97 Squadron Avro Lancaster III ND367 OF-K P/O Cyril Arthur Wakley,” Aircrewremembered.org, accessed January 23, 2020, http://aircrewremembered.com/wakley- cyril.html. 3 “Service Overview, Ben H Stedman,” HonorStates.org, accessed January 22, 2020, https://www.honorstates.org/index.php?id=332266; Ibid. 4 Martin Bowman, Bomber Command Reflections of War: Battleground Berlin, July 1943-March 1944 (United Kingdom: Pen and Sword, 2012), Chapter One, Unmarked Page. vi of-war at the Stalag Luft IVB- Mühlberg camp near Dresden.5 The remaining four men, including Stedman who hung on a tree, his parachute aflame, died.6 Two days after the failed mission, local Germans from the surrounding area buried the three British men and Stedman in the local cemetery, the “Hero Cemetery at Zehrensdorf,” as it had been dubbed in a 1925 local newspaper.7 By 1944, “Hero Cemetery,” located near the secret telecommunications underground bunkers for all operational fronts in Nazi Germany, hosted a wide array of dead.8 The Zehrensdorf cemetery was originally the final resting place for villagers in the 19th century and later became the burial grounds for POWs from two special camps during the First